I'd be curious to see if the increased heart rates are similar for racing or flying video games as for the FPS games.
I remember reading about that 2 percent figure in Chris Hedges' excellent book "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning". I think that we can safely conclude that among those 2 percent were soldiers like Tim McVeigh and the DC sniper. McVeigh won several medals for his killing of a machine gun nest crew in the Persian Gulf War. Then he came back here and blew up a building full of civilians. The whole mental breakdown process of cognitive dissonance Hedges lays out in great detail, from the arrival at boot camp to the tactics used by DIs to forge group cohesion and unity.
That study that revealed the 2 percent number I believe was an analysis on how sustained combat on a military unit effects soldiers' mental well-being. The thought was that after a month or two of combat stress 98 percent of the unit would be crazy meaning rendered combat ineffective. And as for the other 2 percent? They were thought to be crazy when they got there.
Having said that I hate to say that I have a hard time seeing how it applies directly to video game violence. In terms of gore, it has been my experience that it has actually gone down with real physics and ragdoll effects replacing the sprites and animated death sequences of the previous generations. It terms of shot accuracy, I can attest that the doubtless thousands of hours I've put into shooters have not helped me become a better shot on the pistol range. And I still have a very profound unwillingness to shoot other people in real life.
Very interesting series, Evan Robinson. I look forward to the last part.
Again, it seems so far removed from the reality of these school shootings that it seems like nothing more than a distraction, a way to scapegoat...something..rather than to tackle the real issues that present themselves, because tackling those issues might be "too difficult".
No mention of bullying. No mention of mental illness. No mention of desensitization of the value of the other caused by the corporate/religious sphere (Otherwise known as the Right).
Oh wait. You hint at how violent media CAUSES the mental illness. Right.
One more thing. The trend for violent crime even among youth taken as a subgroup (which excludes changing demographics) is either steady or going downward since the mid-90's If violent media, which really has been getting more graphic since the early 90's, was desensitizing in that way, those rates should have skyrocketed IMO. In fact, the numbers indicate the opposite.
Not that I think that's true. I personally think the dropping numbers are due to the internet creating self-controlled communities for youth...something that's been under attack for 30-40 years. That's my theory.
All very interesting, but I agree with Kamarkin. We talk about media-driven desensitization to violence on the part of the school shooting perp, but what about the media's effect on the bullies who always seem to play a part in driving these unstable kids over the edge into (let's make this clear) murder?
Like Kamarkin, I would argue that there's a lower intensity message being spread by the media that violence and cruelty are OK if they're targeted against outsiders and those who are different (i.e. "losers" and "freaks", who become by extension "criminals" or vice-versa). Generally, the only way the target can fight back is to become as cruel and violent, if not more so, than the tormentor.
Severe mental illness on the part of the shooter aside (and this usually is a separate issue of chemical imbalance that would exist without videogames and the media), the root causes in these school shooting are most often centered not on the gunman's internal world but rather in the culture of the victims he has decided to target in his rage and frustration (victims who are often former tormentors). It would be more productive to look at the American media culture's role in creating and enouraging bullies who use constant low intensity violence (physical and mental) to attain for themselves the state of increased arousal discussed.
However, that line of inquiry would expose too many uncomfortable questions about American culture everywhere from school to the workplace to the federal government. Instead, it's much easier (and in its own self self-interest) for the mainstream media to focus on the rare outliers and the very narrow effects on them by so-called non-mainstream media (gory FPS games. indie horror movies, goth music and fashion, the bad ol' Internet) instead of those that send out the more pervasive, normalizing message.
I don't think this is Evan's agenda at all. This is an interesting and well-intentioned series with lots of good stats, but ultimately it misses the point by having too narrow a focus.
you want to deal with school violence. forget teh video games (one of the few relaease valves these kids have) and focus on teh bullying. look into why so many kids are on antidepresents. Every school shooting that I know of (goign back to lauri dann...a friend of mine was a student at that school, he was on a feild trip that day) has two things in common. a history of mental illiness(useualy depresion or bipolar) wich eiter whent untreated or the shooter jsut whent off their meds. and the shooter was a victem of bullying....every single one. you can not say the same thign about the video games, they jsut showed up on the sceen..in fact as pointed out above, FPS existance corilates with a drop in teen violence ...
Look media has allways been violent, the games kids paly have allways beeen violent (espicaly boys, before video games we played cow boy, or war, or cops...what ever, it allways involved "bang your dead"). In fact I think the violence in the past was more grafic then today(SX dose not hold a candle to watching a live execution.).
stop grasping at straw men..if your are concerned about school violence deal with the bullying and (more importantly) the teachers that silently condon the bullying (this comeing from a parten of a kid taht was bullied..it has a majore effect...and he can stand up for himeslef...but the teachers allways took the bullies side...we got that teacher canned)
moonglum:I've not heard of the NIU shooter being bullied (and kind of the same with the VTech shooter), where it seemed to be more straight-up mental illness in both cases. Blame it on Reagan I guess.
But in ALL the grade school shootings, bullying played a major role. Every. Single. One. Which is why people like us who went through that sort of thing take this kinda personally. Probably too much.
OtD:You know, there is a part of gaming that I AM really concerned about, and it is low-level violence. I'm concerned about certain gaming cultures. Specifically in this case, to be honest, the Halo 3 culture, I believe IS desensitizing. Considering that the Halo series isn't graphic violence (It's pretty sanitized actually), the fact that the user base contains so many bigots/sexists/jerks/assholes, etc. is worrisome to me. Strangely enough, my FPS game of choice, Team Fortress 2 is much more graphic, but the community is much more focused on teamplay and there's WAY less of the verbal taunting that is what I object to.
Although, when push comes to shove, and you look outside of mass shootings and get into violent youth, I have a feeling that they play less of the FPS games and play more Madden football. Just my anecdotal experience 'tho.
Karmakin the halo three crowed is younger...you allways have that trouble when 12 year olds are involved.
To be fair, Karmakin, I believe the reason the Halo 3 community is so much 'different' from, say, the TF2 community is because the demographic is different. Halo being a console-FPS (for better or worse, but that's another story...) draws in a different crowd than a PC shooter like TF2, or, say, CoD4 would pull in. There's a lot more college jocks, for example, that play it, and fraternities. Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is also the demographic that those 'high school bullies' generally graduate up to in college.
Also unsurprisingly, I also disagree with the findings of this report, since it feels like really an attempt to make the inevitable (and, at this point, tired) connection between violent video games and youth violence, using quite a lot more statistics than usual. No one will deny a connection between people who enjoy such games and those who decide to go on such a violent spree, but why is it no one makes the connection that maybe already potentially disturbed people choose their entertainment, rather than the entertainment making them potentially disturbed? That's a concept I've written on myself shortly after the Littleton event, and it still bothers me.
Speaking of bullying, being someone who went through that whole sordid affair myself when I went through high school (and makes me thankful I graduated before Littleton happened, as I'm fairly certain my attitude at the time would've marked me for suspicion...), I can easily see exactly why this sort of situation would happen. Obviously I didn't do such at the time, since I'm not that kind of person... but I certainly talked about it often, if not jokingly, with a handful of peers I felt I could talk to.
Also, it can't be said enough: the essay 'Littleton's Silver Lining' by Dan Savage (whom I didn't know wrote it until just now, when I went to look it up... and makes so much sense) so perfectly sums up the situation it's almost amazing it's not required reading for all school administrators. But, like Obama til Denver said, that'd require actual work on their part, so...
This country has just gone through 8-10 years of bullying by the right wing. Will we see an increase in violence based upon the crazed name-calling and scapegoating by the Bushites and Christianists? They are the ones who began this constant slide to incivility. They have always resorted to objectifying those who don't agree with them by calling all of us "unpatriotic" and so on. It can only get uglier the longer we allow such brain-dead wingers to have any real positions of power or any say in this nation's priorities. I fear the school shootings are only the beginning. It won't be long before a winger with a rifle decides that women are the next target, or when some out-of-work lobbyist decides to start looting people's bank accounts at gunpoint just like he used to do in the Good Ol' Days of Rethuglican Rule.
Um, go read the "Stories from the Hellmouth" series on slashdot.org by Jon Katz.
Video games don't cause school shootings. School tolerance of bullying and support of elitism does.
I wouldn't worry about the bank robbery, dejah. Bank stickups are, notoriously, a crime of the stupid.
The banking industry may not be very good at foresight, or white collar crime from it's own highly placed executives. As the last six years shows with nauseating clarity. But they have the physical security piece pretty thoroughly knocked. After all, they've had plenty of experience, and practice does make Pretty Damn Good, if not Perfect.
But those "wingers with rifles" are not, alas, theoretical. As the last two decades of violence against family planning and birth control facilities and workers demonstrates.
Dave Neiwert, Sara's co-blogger over at Orcinus, has been making the tracking of this issue his mission in life for the last half dozen years.
Like Shannon Spencer Fox, I was bullied. Unlike Shannon, I didn't talk about it. I just fantasized ... and fantasized ... and fantasized.
I pictured myself toting an M-16 to my middle-school playground and killing dozens of people. And I meant it, too. I would sit there for several minutes at a time, imagining the preparation and the look of surprise on bullies' faces when they realized that they were about to die.
I'm so glad I didn't have access to a semiautomatic weapon in those days, 30-something years ago. And when Columbine happened, I totally got it. I didn't have much sympathy for the jocks who were killed and I still don't. They had a lot of fun bullying kids while it lasted. They had full, satisfying lives, short as they were.
Jen thanks couldnt' remember the guys name...he hits the topic perfectly.
Let me tell you about my friend "Macky" in high school (not thsi realy isn't me..while I did get bullied a little I tended to hurt people very badly very quickly...found that if you break the bullies arem it stops..and all you get is a suspension...hey day off of school and a stop to the bulliying sign me up).
Macky is oen of hte kids I would eat lunch with, we all fit into the losers and geeks catagory, but macky was one of the worst. He came from a poorer family in an afluent area, he was small, had greasy hair, and ragged cloths. I knwo relise that he at least had aspergrass syndrom if not full blown aotuism, so his personality left a lot to be desiered. He was a great guy, and a good friend...but a pure geek.
Well every day mackys mom would put a fresh cupcake in his lunch...he loved these (a little OCD as well). A seinior jock took it apon himeslef to smash macky cup cake, so every day macky would pull out his lunch and every day this bully would crush the cup cake.
One day macky sates "I wouldn't touch that if i where you". the jock laughed ask "waht are you going to do about it" and smashed his hand down as hard as he could...well it turns out macky had put the nastyist, thickest, rustyist nail he could find in teh center of his cupcake....we laughed and laughed as teh bully ran around crying....ahh good times.
we are all damm luck that macky nver had access to firearms.
It isn't the games, its the bullying.
I was in college during Columbine, called macky...we both agreed that we could have been those kids have life gone jsut a littel different...
dejah thoris the school shootings have been going on for as long as there have been schools and guns...its got nothign to due with bush.
face it society has never been civil, it ahs allways been a violent unfriendly place...there is jsut enough of us now that the vaneir has been streched thin.
well taht and communicatiosn is faster...nothing new is happenign, we jsut hear about it more.
What I think Evan is trying to get at, is that if you combine the desensitization with the wonderful world of American schooling with its large sample population, that some of that 2% that are 'natural soldiers' will say "Fuck it" and unload a clip, instead of say go over a desk and wrap their hands around a tormentor's throat. Like I did. Took two guys to pull me off of him.
Violent media and games aren't the cause, but they do facilitate, they can grease the slope as it were.
Forgive me Evan but I got some questions.
I know there will be a follow up post on the consequences of this but it's statistics like this that have been used to vilify the gaming industry to advocate for censorship of television and movies.
And why the grafting of military techniques on civilians especially children without a discussion of access to weapons (our totally insane gun laws) and the particular cultures that many of these school shooters grow up in?
I'll say it if no one else has. Why hasn't anyone done any studies on the fact that these shooters always tend to be male and white? Why hasn't it been posited that there might be a particular issue with white male culture in this country that makes them commit these acts?
I mean the history of racism alone in this country can explain group absolution, total distance from victim and target attractiveness of victim from Grossman's list.
trey, see the problem is the whole premis is bullshit. we are nto dealign with ordenary people that have to be traind to kill (as with troops, the second half of evans post is meaningless for the dsscussion). we are deailing with peopel who have it in their make up the ability to kill, and then are pushed by their peers, or society, or medicatiosn goen haywiere over that edge into acual killing...thsi isn't abotu gammes. this si about power and a feelign of powerlessness...takign taht gun fianly lets these kids hav controll over something.
I would recomend that every one read the hellmouth serise taht jen rocmended, it attackes this topic a lot better and a lot more honestly then evan has done.
the final installemnt of that, hope in the hellmouth is a must read
http://features.slashdot.org/art...9/05/03/
0518209
what it comes down to is taht folks like evan, while well intentioned are doing mroe harm then good. yes we have a violence problems in our schools...it has allways been there. the video games are not the root cause, they are infact on of the release valves that teh teens that are victems of this violence have, its the victems of school violence that trun into teh shooters...its about takeing back that power, finaly havieng controll over your life and your enviroment.
the macky story happend longe before FPS hit teh sceen, before MK1 hit the sceen. Loriy Dann happend long before video games came home. Hell take a stroll down crime librarys kids that kill section. they where all bullied, they all had mental problems (mostly depreshion or bipolar).
the spree killing is a little diffrent, but its the same old story in the end, they use to turn into serial killers now they go out in a falsh..its the same guys in the end.
"What I think Evan is trying to get at, is that if you combine the desensitization with the wonderful world of American schooling with its large sample population, that some of that 2% that are 'natural soldiers' will say "Fuck it" and unload a clip, instead of say go over a desk and wrap their hands around a tormentor's throat."
Thanks Trey. That thesis makes sense. Re-stated:
Blaming videogames for school shootings is bone stupid, because only 2% of teenaged boys would have the serious inclination to translate that virtual FPS experience into an actual one, and not all of that small sub-set are bullied or frustrated or chemically imbalanced enough to think about revenge on their peers and teachers in the first place, let alone carry it out. That leaves a very tiny group of outliers, and consequently very sporadic (though dramatic and frightening) school shooting incidents.
Evan is taking a very roundabout way to get there (if that's where he's going), but that thesis is supported by the stats he's presented. However, without a discussion of the larger issues of dysfunctional school environments (elitism, bullying tolerated by administrators, kids kept under control with psychotropic meds, etc.) and how they're supported by the violent media culture, I don't see how reducing the effect of exposure to that culture is going to further reduce that tiny subset of teenage "natural soldiers" who actually carry through on their fantasies.
BTW, I learned the same lesson that you did about fighting back against bullies. It happened when I was 10, got fed up and scared the shit out of the bully and his toadies. No one messed with me at any school after that (you learn to carry yourself, I guess).
Obama til Denver : I learnd that in third grade...if you stand up for yourslef, and show the bullie that you WILL hurt him regardless of what happens to you that bullie will leve you alone...there is allways another.
Here is what the antivideo game advocates jsut don't get.
1. the violence has allways been there, it will allways be ther regardles of the media...think back, it may be hard as teh memory starts to go, but think back to your teenage years. Remember when your elders blamed rock music (or jazz, or whatever was before that) for all of your social ills. Its teh same damm thing , and yes you look jsut as ridiculas.
2. YOU are a major part of the problem. Go read KAtz series, it should help you to understand. You are takeing a group that is irrational by nature (teenagers), that are hyper agressive by nature(teenage boys). they feel powerless to effect soceity, their lives or their enviroment. they have very few outlets for that natural agresion and YOU a supposedly rational authority figure is attackign those outlets(be it video games, comic books, rock music...whatever came before or will come after, the argument is ALLWAYS the same). YOU are makeign thsoe kids feel more pwoerless, YOU are conferming that hte world is infact out to get tehm. a samll subset (allread unhinged due to years of abuse, or chemical brain inbalances, or both) is goign to see confermation of their worst fears and react accordingly. you combined that with teh easy access to firearms in society and soem are going to chose guns to leave their mark on the world.
the desensitization argument is just a load of bullshit, a strawman to remove focus on teh realy issues. eleiteism in our school, and teachers that if not directly condon the actiosn of the "cool" kids stand by and do nothing(don't get me wrong a lot of teachers activly condone the actions).
Please, before you run off and attack the release valve, read katze hell mouth series, read the words that these kids write...their pain IS real...ti may be irrational, but they are teenagers, they are irrational.
nice, half the comments on this thread jsut vanished...fuckign haloscan....oh well.
katz sayes it a lot better (and less infalmatory) then I did any way. thsi is from jsut after columbine
"The big story out of Littleton isn't about violence on the Internet, or whether or not video games are turning out kids into killers. It's about the fact that for some of the best, brightest and most interesting kids, high school is a nightmare of exclusion, cruelty, warped values and anger"
hey evan, your entire premis is assbackwords wrong, but thansk for bringing it up, gave me a reson to revist katz work when he was still worthwhile (he whent off the deepend in 2001)
its painfull to remember but it should be revisited for those of us from that subculture (I lived in an arcade durign my mispsent youth, adn may have helped with TBBOM)...to this day I still get crap for wearign a trenchcoat.
and now my comments are back...fuckign haloscan is makeign me lok nuts now (thanks but I don't need the help)
some more form katz
very telling quote from the littelton shooters
"
"We want to be different," wrote one of the Colorado killers in a diary found by the police. "We want to be strange and we don't want jocks or other people putting us down." The sentiment, if not the response to it, was echoed by kids all over the country. The Littleton killings have made their lives much worse. "
and from katz himself.
"media reports - in fact, none that I saw - pointed out that the FBI Uniform Crime reports, issued bi-annually, along with the Justice Departments reports (statistical abstracts on violence are available on the Department's website and in printed form) academic studies and some news reports have reporters for years now. Violence among the young is dropping across the country, even as computing, gaming, cable TV and other media use rises. "
i think the second quote sums it up nicly.
evan allow me to answer your final question...
what do all of your statistics mean...not a damm thing, they are rather meaningless infact.
found katz first slashdot artical on the subect.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?n...9/04/22/
2136230
you want a well researched, well reasoned look at why kids kill, and not the crap that evan is pushing take a look at it. Still looking for his first artical on the subject, from hotwired in 1988 (im sure he blamed the FPS games that where to coem out 5 years later.).
his conclusions seem to be directly at odds with evans...
here is his hotwired artical..got the date wrong it was 98 not 88...thats why i couldn't find it.
http://www.efc.ca/pages/media/
ho...ed.04jun98.html
hey hey looks like haloscan lost a server...so dependign on where you post, and when it will show up...i love busted round robin load balancing
for those taht are new to the onlien world here is the entire nine part hellmouth series
http://features.slashdot.org/art...0/10/23/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...0/10/23/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...0/10/23/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...00/10/23/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...0/10/23/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...0/10/23/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...00/12/22/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...1/01/03/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...01/01/10/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...1/01/16/
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and here is the four part up, up, down, down series taht tries to explain the get off my lawn syndrom that evan is pushing
http://features.slashdot.org/art...0/11/27/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...00/11/27/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...0/11/27/
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http://features.slashdot.org/art...0/11/27/
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Some of you guys missed the point.
First of all, the post is talking more about TV than videogames. This isn't a Jack Thompson rant.
Second, this post isn't saying anywhere that violent TV shows or videogames are the whole problem, or the only thing we should pay attention to. It's saying there's good evidence that they may be part of the problem.
I agree that bullying and other harder-to-pinpoint social causes are a serious problem and probably more responsible for these violent episodes than videogames. They need studies done on them, too. But I would be amazed if bullying didn't exist 50 or 80 years ago, before the rise in violent crime or these big school shootings. It might be the case that it's easier for kids to become seriously isolated now than it was 50 years ago, but I don't know that for sure, and I don't think anybody does.
Sorry for being so late, but moonglum is right. Read Mark Ames, he of the eminent Exile.ru. He wrote a book called Going Postal, about the (initially) UPS office rage murders, which expanded into the 90s with school shootings. He conveniently just wrote up a nicely detailed piece on that latest Illinois thing on his site, too.
What it boils down to is that this kinda stuff is NOT a result of desensification. If I may quote a comic (prolly Bill Hicks but I may be wrong) - "so what violent videogames did Hitler play?". It's, in Ames' words, the result of the culture of fear and greed that Reagonomics produced, a la Jack Welch. Though it seems like some of the school shootings, like V-Tech, were motivated by sadly repressed sexual instincts, most are retaliations to bullying nonsense.
I love these stats, though, this is fascinating stuff.
"Second, this post isn't saying anywhere that violent TV shows or videogames are the whole problem, or the only thing we should pay attention to. It's saying there's good evidence that they may be part of the problem."
A very small part when it comes to the school shooters themselves. The more I think about this post, the more I think that Evan (who worked for a videogame company IIRC) is trying to demonstrate that fact quantitatively just as many others, including moonglum, have done anecdotally. Let's give Evan a chance to wrap his series up before we lump him in with jerks like Jack Thompson.
Look, the mainstream media, whether it's TV or movies or videogames, desensitizes all of us to many types of violence. For most of us this doesn't make much of a difference in our actions beyond tolerating or accepting activities we really shouldn't.
For a smaller group (usually pegged at 10% of the population) of bullies, sociopaths and psychopaths, media violence provides a cultural justification for their anti-social acts and provides an atmosphere where they can get away with more (see the Bush administration and many corporate HQs).
Then there's an even smaller (2% of the male population) group of these "natural soldiers" who might act out those violent media fantasies given a certain combination of external circumstances and internal conditions. These are the people Evan is discussing.
Finally, there is that statistically insignificant group of school shooters who follow through. The driving external factors seem to be bullying (in elementary and high school shootings), romantic and sexual and education disappointments (in college sprees), and work-related problems and stresses in workplaces. There's also usually a heaping serving of chemical imbalances or family dysfunction tossed into the mix.
So by the time you get to that tiny (less than 1% by both the stats and real world outcomes) last group, media violence (if it hasn't acted as a steam-release valve) has become little more than a crude training tool (target practice and clumsy mods) and maybe a tertiary justification for the act (similar to that used by the psychopathic 10% mentioned above). At that point, there are many other larger motivating factors at work, and the issue of desensitization toward violence in school shootings should be focused on the bullies and their enablers rather than on the shooter.
But like I said above, doing that would open up a whole can of worms that American society isn't ready to face. So the sensationalist mainstream media, which is also too lazy to look at statistics like Evan's and too invested in promoting cultural homogeneity to look at viewpoints like those of "Hellmouth" and Ames and Savage, will keep promoting this stupid idea that videogames or music or what have you were the primary cause.
And politicians like Hillary (hey, someone had to say it) and media whores like Jack Thompson will keep exploiting this fallacious idea if it gets them attention and airtime.
In sixth grade, I moved to a new school, and became the target of a bully.
He targeted me as I was riding my bike over a little bridge over a good size gully. At one point, he threatened to toss me over it.
I know he was trying to scare me, because that is how we wound up at a precarious point of the bridge. I was struggling to stay cool because it was literally the only thing I could think of to do, having been taught that reacting to bullies ramps up their attacks.
Being a girl, I had not been taught any handy choke holds (though I have since remedied that.)
After an agonizing half hour, I found the right lever; I said I would report him to the principal if he threw me over the bridge. He got scared and ran away.
Why that one worked when all the others didn't I don't know. But it taught me that the only thing bullies understand is superior force.
I think that's what the bullied school shooters are saying. Dramatically.
"so what violent videogames did Hitler play?
He didn't need to 'play', he went through the greatest horror of them all......... life in the trenches of WWI.
Another thing I thought of. School shootings being extremely rare, if violent TV and games have an impact, it's not going to be the shooters themselves. The main impact would be on the bullies. There used to be a theory that bullies were social misfits who took their anger out on anybody who seemed vulnerable. Think Nelson from the Simpsons. But kids who verbally abuse other kids are mostly well-liked and respected by their peers. (At least, this is what I last read on the subject, I'm having trouble finding good research on this on the web.)
So bullies is kind of a misleading word, because it makes it sound like it's a minority of kids. Whereas it seems like, actually, most kids are bullies. As for graphic violence, since everybody is exposed to low levels of graphic media violence, I think it's very unlikely that its overall impact is mainly just a few extreme episodes, or even on violent crime in general.
Most of the effect of violent TV is probably on regular social interactions.
Evan -
Don't know if you're still following this thread, I may have come to it late. I couldn't get past this quote:
In American culture, toddlers as young as eighteen months begin with TV programs designed especially for them that contain twice as much violence as adult prime-time viewing.
I'm a preschool educator with a young child, and I've watched every major preschool/toddler television show and I have no idea what they're talking about. I can't think of a single show that has any more violence than a school bully knocking down a tower of blocks, or a brother pushing a sister. Sesame Street *used* to have some violence (muppets almost got eaten on a regular basis). Do they have any specific examples of show names or production companies? I'm dying to know!
(I'm not suggesting that children as young as 18 months *don't* see loads of violence on TV, but I really don't think that there are any programs "designed especially" for 18 month olds that contain any significant amounts of violence. Programs "designed especially" for 5-9 year olds? That I'd believe)
bicyclewarriorwith314: you miss my piont...violent games ahve nothing to do wit hvilonet acts...teh rate of teenage violence has GONE DOWN every year science teh first fightign game and first FPS where released. they are not part of the problem, they are a small part of the solution..the ygive these kids a release valve, it gives them somewhere that they have power.
Here is an example of how nuts people are getting thanks to media hype of school shootings. This item appeared in a Metro Phoenix newspaper, the East Valley Tribune. So I think it's a reasonably safe bet that the owners of this paper are probably conservative and almost certainly Republicans.
And yet they saw fit to publish this next: Database of mental health backgrounds won’t make ASU safer.
Assume, for a moment, that Arizona State University was somehow able to surmount federal medical privacy law and have all the information there is to know about the mental health histories of its 64,000 students.
Imagine there was an easily navigable yet secure database where every psychoactive drug they’ve ever taken, every image with violent overtones they ever drew, every time they went to see a counselor in a school or nonschool setting.
How could school administrators be expected to make the calls that the scientific community still can’t, on which disturbed individuals will only make themselves miserable, create low-level mischief or inflict large-scale tragedy?
Yet an ASU-appointed committee on school safety formed in wake of the April 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, its urgency magnified by the Valentine’s Day slaying of five students at Northern Illinois University, is considering a recommendation that students be required to disclose their mental health histories.
It isn’t clear yet just how much disclosure might be required or how many students may be pressured to hand very private information over to a huge public bureaucracy, or exactly how the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and other relevant legislation wouldn’t be triggered, but the proposal is already heading in the wrong direction on several levels.
Even if ASU only sought information from students currently taking medication intended to stifle potentially dangerous thoughts or behaviors, whose responsibility would it be to track these students to make sure they’re following doctors’ orders? Could time spent watching “red-flagged” students who likely won’t be a threat to anyone distract authorities from real threats posed by others?
Such a role would impose a huge liability on the school. Like most colleges and universities, ASU already offers counseling services to students, and those counselors are already required to report otherwise confidential sessions when patients appear a threat to themselves or others.
Any more invasive role for ASU would give the school guardianship over adults taking classes there. After that, it’s not a far leap to the point where schools feel they’re within their rights to turn away applicants with pre-existing mental health or other conditions, just like an insurance company.
It’s natural for extreme measures to be considered when people try to prevent an inexplicable slaughter from happening again, particularly around vulnerable groups like a bunch of people sitting in a large, open lecture hall with just a couple of exits.
Involving ASU and other institutions of higher learning in the mental health lives of their students, however, would add to the stigma of seeking treatment for mental health, jeopardize student privacy, and do nothing to make campuses safer.
My point?
The levels of panic and hysteria are getting to the point where the consequent dysfunctional thinking is making the even wingnuts nervous.
while i am a big fan of medical privacy, ther eought to be a way to get mental health recordes linked into the national firearms DB...make sure people with a histories of depresion, biploar ect don't get guns ( i gues the biggest risk there is that people jsut wont get treated)
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